the back page - little monkeys

I love the falling leaves this time of year! While they’re beautiful to watch as they twirl down to the ground, I love them for another reason, too…

All of my boys have birthdays between Dec 7th and Jan 3rd. Makes it sound like they’re all spread out through that month, but don’t be fooled - the older two are four days apart and the younger two, you know, share their birthday. *wink, wink* Anyway, the point is that I was at the ob/gyn pretty much the same time of year with all of them. The office is on the 10th floor of a single tower next to ‘our’ hospital. They have rooms that go almost all the way around the building so you can really see all of Waco as you make the rounds at different appointments - the Alico building, the suspension bridge, Lake Waco, Baylor University, on and on.

One of the most striking things, though, is that it seems like the entire town is covered by trees when you’re up there looking down. There really are lots and lots of trees here, but I mean it looks like you could walk across town on the treetops kind of covered. When I would start going to the dr in the late spring, everything was totally green. But as I got closer and closer to my due date(s), the leaves began to change. One or two trees here and a couple over there. As my appointments got closer together, the trees kept pace. More and more they changed and, eventually, they started to lose their leaves. I would walk to and from the car with leaves swishing around my feet, blowing down the street.

The last couple of days have stood out as being so, so much like those dreamy preggo days. The anticipation, the wondering what they will be like, the dreams of how things will be…I don’t imagine I’d have such strong feelings if the boys’ birthdays were all spread throughout the year, but, since they’re all bunched together, each pregnancy just built on the one(s) before so that now when the leaves start changing and swirling around…sigh…happy thoughts, wonderful memories, and lots of smiles!

If you’re sad to see the Spring Sets go before you got one (more? ), contact the stores that carry the Store More Stamps line to see if they still have any in stock!  Forgot to mention before that the stores will continue to sell the products they have, so be sure to check with them if you missed out. 

Be sure to check back for some sneak peeks at the new colors starting this weekend!

I love stamps. I have lots of stamps. There’s always new stamps coming out that I want (make that, need!) - big stamps, teeny stamps, always something new! After several years of stamps, stamps, and more stamps, I hit a point that I had to start being creative in how I stored all these stamps. I mean, it was either get creative or not get any new ones because space available to store my stamps was becoming scarce. It was just me and my husband, Chris, when I visited that store in Santa Fe. Those same several years I spent building my collection also brought little bundles of joy to our lives. One, then another, then two more (twins!) Space for my stuff was dwindling, but the love of stamps and scrapbooking was not. The need to capture our memories, celebrate each moment, etc. was growing, too.

The majority of my stamps were mounted on wooden blocks. Great for stamping, not so much for storage. I was next introduced to unmounted stamps - wonderful, love them so much! Thank you to the Internet for helping expose us to so many more possibilities. And, now, I get to love all the acrylic stamps coming out. It just gets better and better!!

In order to store all my stamps, I was having to store them in ways that were oh, so neatly organized, but oh, so neatly out of sight. I have a pretty good idea of what stamps I’ve purchased, but I couldn’t get to them to use them. This is where the stamp collecting really comes in. I’m not of the mind set to get rid of any of my stamps, but with the storage situation I was in, it was getting harder to think about buying more. And that’s the goal, right? Oh, yeah, and to use the ones we’ve got! ;o)

Hello, my name is Susan and I collect stamps.

Collecting is the keyword there - notice there is no USING of said collection. To put it simply, I love stamps. Have since Sunday School when Carrie and I would stamp our way through lessons with Mrs. Walker.

Didn’t really have many of my own other than the ones that were popular growing up that came with a little ink cover, like Hello Kitty, Smurfs, etc. They’re still out there, too. My boys have some now that are Bugs Bunny! ha! The ones we used in Sunday School, though were wood-mounted rubber stamps and we even got to use ink pads. What a concept – what fun!

I got my first set of stamps as a ‘grown-up’ in Santa Fe in 1999. There’s a great store there that reintroduced me to rubber stamps and I was excited that this was something I could get into, a hobby. And so, my stamp collection/collecting habit began. From there, I bought individual stamps here and there as they caught my eye, but didn’t really do anything more with them. As I was getting started scrapbooking, I went to a workshop with a friend and bought my first “real” stamp set. Talk about love! Once I got started, I really became a serious collector – rubber stamps, both mounted and unmounted, and, now, acrylic stamps that so many scrapbook companies are releasing these days.

I’m sure everyone’s got a story pretty close to this on how they got started stamping, or stamp collecting. I’d love to hear your story!

Time to start letting everyone know about the new stamp storage system we’ve been working so hard to produce! This is when the butterflies are really starting to flutter - hoping others will see the overall idea driving this new system, rethinking each decision. I’m talking major butterflies! It’s exciting, too, though. The idea that it can help others in the same way it has helped us with our storage frustrations is the driving motivator for us working to get the system “out there.”